Monday, March 12, 2012

A Grand Adventure

Sometimes you just have to get out of the city and drive until you hear a banjo and see wild turkeys and baby lambs.

Sometimes you just have to drive 3 ½ hours (each way) and stand in line for an hour for real fresh and real delicious maple donuts.

Sometimes you just have to get swallowed up by the smell of real maple syrup straight from real maple trees.

This past weekend a friend and I drove down to Highland County Virginia, which isn’t just in the country, It’s in the coun-try. The drive snaked it’s way past Shenandoah and through the George Washington National Forest. We saw classic red barns and 17, 3987 cows. We drove up mountains and down mountains and along swirly country roads. We ended up at a small town Maple Festival where we found a banjo player in a hallway, a cranky cop and the longest donut line I have ever seen .

The story of the donuts told through pictures:

And so it begins . . .

End of the line

Almost there!

The line behind us is finally longer than the line in front of us

Sometimes smug people would eat their donuts in front of the people still standing in line.

Peeking into the window watching the donuts being made

After waiting in line for an hour, victory was ours!

We also drove to a sugar camp to see how maple syrup is made:

The Puffenbarger Sugar Camp prides itself in being above the old school bucket process.

Holes in the trees are drilled and plugged with tubing which brings the sap into the fancy machines which removes the water from the sap using reverse osmosis (science!). One of the owners of the camp was super excited to turn on the machine and let us take pictures of the process.

The sap is then boiled down into syrup. The smell was pretty intoxicating. I will never, ever, ever eat fake syrup again.

And by road trip protocol, the ride home included a stirring sing-a-long version of The Duke of Earl. We totally owned that song.

It was one of the most random Saturdays that I have had in a while, a day where you just keep driving until you figure out where you are. A much needed day, completely opposite of every other day.